


The Ones You Can't Save

by AutobotNightStrider



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Burning, Character Death, Don't copy to another site, Emotional Hurt, Hunk (Voltron) Whump, Hurt Hunk (Voltron), Hurt shoulder, Lava - Freeform, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 12:51:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17725535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AutobotNightStrider/pseuds/AutobotNightStrider
Summary: It never got easier, being unable to save someone. It led to guilt, even if it was not actually your fault, and anger- anger to deep and so sour that it often led to explosions.Sometimes the burning of the fuse was short, and the explosion brief and small and easily handled. Sometimes the fuse sat untouched for weeks- until the tiniest, littlest thing brushed a spark onto it, and it set the whole thing ablaze.Hunk did not remember his first time failing to save someone. There had been times before, certainly. A soldier he’d been pulling to his Lion only to not make it in time- a wound he was stitching shut, only for it to be naught.None of them stood out quite so much as this particular instance.





	The Ones You Can't Save

**Author's Note:**

> Strider notes: Hiya! Again, crossposting my drabble. Please, come check me out over at 
> 
> https://yellowfeverpaladin.tumblr.com/
> 
> Come ask my Hunk questions! :D Good ones, bad ones, all the ones. I would love the interaction- or rp, if you rp.

It never got easier, being unable to save someone. It led to guilt, even if it was not actually your fault, and anger- anger to deep and so sour that it often led to explosions. Sometimes the burning of the fuse was short, and the explosion brief and small and easily handled. Sometimes the fuse sat untouched for weeks- until the tiniest, littlest thing brushed a spark onto it, and it set the whole thing ablaze.

Hunk did not remember his first time failing to save someone. There had been times before, certainly. A soldier he’d been pulling to his Lion only to not make it in time- a wound he was stitching shut, only for it to be naught.

None of them stood out quite so much as this particular instance.

The planet Vugati had sent out a distress signal- naturally, Atlas had been the first to respond. Vugati, upon arrival, had been in the middle of a complete environmental and planetary disaster. They had only a day to get as many Vuga off of the planet as possible- with the terrain cracking, crumbling, and falling into pits of venomous black magma below their feet.

More than half of the population had been lost already- it was a rush against the clock, and they had no ships in which to evacuate. They had to get them as quickly as they could from the unstable ground to the few, sturdy spots where they could land their lions.

Which was where Hunk had found himself in his predicament.

His arm strained. The muscles under his armor were bulging, cords pulled tight as he strained. His other arm held a child firmly to his chest, trying to shield them from the heat as they wailed, screamed for their parent.

The hand his straining arm held was scrabbling at him, claws trying to grip his slick armor and get purchase to pull themselves up.

Hunk’s breath fogged the inside of his mask, and he gave a growl, his legs straining under the ledge he’d wedge them in when they’d fallen. He tried to use whole body to pull upwards, but there was no use in it.

The Vuga were heavy- the children themselves weighed about two hundred pounds. The adult hanging off his arm was upwards of his weight limit- with both arms, he could have pulled him up, but there was no chance with a single arm.

::Guys?:: He called into his communications link. The heat was starting to bother him in his suit, his hands slipping just a little in his gloves. The suits were made to withstand extreme cold temperatures, not so much extreme heats or acids.

The sobs of the child nearly choking him were deafening. ::Guys please, I need help. I went down with a dad and his kid into a crack- there’s Lava, and I can’t carry them up all together. Guys?::

Silence crackled back at him.

Vugati was ripe with volcanic interruption. The only one that Hunk could feel was his Lion- and Yellow had already taken off and was heading towards him. But she couldn’t land- she couldn’t touch down, or they’d all be in the magma.

“Baima!” The child shrieked, giving a firm squirm against Hunk. “Baima! Baima!”

Baima was the Vuga word for father, and there in such equivalents according to his translator. The child was screaming for his father.

Every wailing cry from the ash colored child broke Hunk’s heart, and no amount of gentle shushing could quell the child.

The ledge under them gave a creaking groan, a thick splinter of heat webbing out from under his hip, and the hand scrabbling against his tightened but ceased at clawing.

“Okay, okay. We… We need to hold still, okay?” Hunk’s voice projected out of his helmet. “I need you both to hold very still. We’re going to be okay.”

“Ganbi?” The older male on the edge of the cliff raised his voice.

“Baima!” The child sobbed. “Baima! Baima, you have to climb up!”

“Ganbi.” The adult’s voice was a trembling semblence of calm. Something forced- something that set off warning lights with every word said. “You need to be good for the paladins of Voltron, okay? Be good. Sleep when it is time, remember wash, and to eat all of your meal. Be good, Ganbi. Be good for your Baima.”

“What?” The child sniffled a dry noise. “Baima, wha- what are you talking about?”

Hunk _knew_.

He shifted, and he tightened his grip around the thick wrist until his fingers felt like they were bruising. “No. No, no, you just stay right here.” Hunk’s shoulder gave a pop so hard that his vision gained black dots. “Just- I’ve got you okay? I’ve got you. It’s going to be fine. Just… Just hold on.”

“Yellow Paladin. Thank you.” The hand that had clawed at him for a better grip now clawed at him to let go.

And damn it, Hunk held on. He held on as tight as he could, his muscles straining against an alien beyond his weight limits, beyond his strength limits. His shoulder popped, his tendons strained and tore, and his fingers lost feeling- and Hunk held on, grinding his teeth against each other as he refused to let go. Refused to let this father die to save them- not when it wasn’t necessary.

Another crack in the ground made his shoulder drop two inches, and his arm spasmed as he cried out- and then his fingers were empty.

“Baima!” The child shrieked, smaller clawed hands reaching past Hunk’s face for the hands no longer visible.

Hunk wanted to say that death for the father was instantaneous as it might have been for a human- but it was not. The screaming started seconds after there was a slushy sounding splash, followed by heavy thrashing and the attempt to try and climb the crumbling sides.

Hunk could only flop his likely fucked shoulder over the kid, and curl around the kid as tight as he could while the screaming and muffled sobs of “Baima!” echoed in his ears like a haunting chant.

It took what felt like entirely too long for the kid’s father to die. And by the time he did, the kid was eerily silent.

“We’re going to die...” The kid whispered. “Like Baima...”

“You’re not going to die.” Hunk whispered furiously, his arms tightening. “Not now. Not until you’re old and whatever passes for wrinkly among your people. You’ll be okay, Ganbi. You’ll be okay.”

And the ledge held- held until a thin leonine paw shoved into the crack and extracted them out- Lance bailing him out with the Red Lion’s agile limbs.

The time it had taken between the fall of Ganbi’s father and the complete extraction with Red had been only three minutes.

* * *

 

It didn’t hit him until several weeks after Vugati had ruptured into a bunch of unlivable space lava, long after his arm had been repaired and Ganbi had been returned to his remaining family.

His arm was taking a while to fully recover. The pods could heal most of it, but the tendons themselves had to go through physical therapy of sort to get back to their full functionality.

He dropped things, sometimes- his tendons would tremble and seize, and tools would tumble from his hand, or he’d drop cups and plates. After he shattered his favorite mug, he’d given up the goat and gone to the medical bay and gotten some help.

The medic had small exercises for his arm- lifting small weights, extending his hand, flexing his fingers, rolling his wrist. He had to squeeze a ball and hold it tight in his fist for the count down of a timer, and that timer would slowly increase as his strength did. It was small things that helped in the long run- but it was a slow process to get better.

He did most of his exercises while he was doing other things.

Lifting weights was easily done while he was reading, or eating, or even doing simple cooking tasks. Flexing and extending was done almost as second nature.

The holding the ball for the time period thing was a little bit harder. He had to work himself up, thirty seconds, forty five seconds, and so on.

He was doing good- better than good- until the one time that he wasn’t.

Hunk was in the middle of reading a report in his room, while the counter next to him slowly ticked upwards on time. His eyes scanned paragraph by paragraph, keeping his mind and body calm while he held his hand in a tight fist. Near the middle of the paper, however, his arm twinged from the shoulder down, and he dropped the ball- three seconds before he hit his three minute timer on the goal.

Hunk stared at it for a while, at the clock mocking him, and the ball rolling across the floor like a dark black menace.

Sometimes it only took little things to trigger the snap. To some, this would be a little thing. To Hunk, it was not a little thing.

He was on his feet before he knew it, his fist balling and smashing into the reinforced wood of his desk. His vision tunneled, his mind hyper-focusing on one thing and one thing alone. Anger. He was angry, so, _so_ angry. Angry at the ball, angry at the clock, angry at the stupid planet that had it’s ecological disaster- he was a burning fury of rage and he could see nothing past the tunnel of fury and the tears pouring from his eyes.

And when Hunk was burnt out, he sat in the center of the wreckage that had been his desk, with his knuckles bedecked in splinters and cuts and his palms poked from the hard screws used to once hold it together, and he _sobbed_.

Most of all, Hunk was angry at _himself_. Three minutes- he had been three lousy minutes away from having gotten the boy’s father out, and he’d have taken all the torn muscles in the world to be able to go back and fix it. To not have to hear the kid’s echoing wails while his father burned alive and cried for mercy, for it to end.

Three minutes- and the kid still would have had his dad. The cliff would have held- it would have, he knew it would have.

It may not have been Hunk’s fault- but it was his shoulder that gave, his hand that had given before the dad had pried himself free. It _wasn’t_ his fault, but it sure _felt_ like it was, deep, deep down inside his core.

Locked away inside his room, Hunk let himself grieve for the child, for the nightmares he’d have, both of them would have, and for the pain the father had suffered because Hunk hadn’t been strong enough.


End file.
